The forum is quiet at the moment, so I thought I’d share a recent experience.
On Monday I went out to do some approaches after a good two weeks off. I was feeling timid, but at the same time I knew that my approach technique is good, so I wasn’t expecting anything bad to happen.
How wrong I was! My first three approaches were absolutely horrendous. I got those kind of rejections where the girl pulls a weird face and walks off before you even finish your sentence. Brutal.
I hadn’t experienced that in a long time. But I knew that that kind of rejection only happens when you are feeling nervous and uncomfortable. I told myself that I was having a bad day for approaches, so I should do two more approaches just to keep the cobwebs off.
I see a gorgeous girl walking down the street. I force myself to run up and approach. In my head I’m saying “you’re having a bad day, this is a guaranteed rejection, but just do it for the practice”.
Surprise surprise, the approach went great. She was immediately receptive and we had a really fun interaction. Exactly the opposite of what I expected. After that I felt great! My state totally changed and all my normal feelings of confidence came back.
Here’s what I think are the important lessons:
1. It is always worth approaching, even when you feel like crap. Sometimes everything you’ve practiced kicks in and you still do ok. Worst case scenario, you get rejected but you have chipped away at your approach anxiety that little bit more.
2. The positive experiences outweigh the negative ones by a mile. The reality is, no matter how good you are at this, you are going to get more rejections than successes. But one good experience is all it takes to remind you that your practice pays off.
I also think that pushing yourself to go way out of your comfort zone suddenly puts all the more ‘minor’ challenges into perspective.
So there you go. Keep pushing, people.
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